Hi Craig, glad you replied and I was pleasantly surprised you were around to do so as quickly as you did. I'm not setting out to justify my experiences in any way, I'm simply reporting them. I'm also glad you've had more luck with databasing in the last 3 years than I've had. Given how things have gone here during that time, I'd have every right to be bitter, but I'm not. I'm just glad as I am to be getting into something so much better.

Phoenix? The one in the US I presume? 🙂

I ask (partly because I'm poking fun at your very american presumption I'd know what nation Phoenix is in!!) partly because your economy varies from state to state, even county to county, let alone from ours. IT has been in utterly dire straits here in the UK since '07, and although in the last few weeks there is a recruiting upswing in progress at the uppermost levels of the Investment Banking sector, you still need skillsets longer than my schlong to benefit from it.

Doctors, Actuaries etc commonly make six figure salaries here in the UK (GBP), but barely 5% of DBA's do, yet we must study a lot more on an ongoing basis (and that is a cost not merely in materials but mostly time). Doctors still organise soiree's amongst themselves so they don't end up marrying gold-diggers. We DBA's don't go to balls so we can pair up with other DBA's (thank God!). People were gonna have heart attacks whether in 2006 or in 2010, but the number of people hiring DBA's, the number of projects signed off, the number of billable hours the self-employed among us enjoyed fell of a damn cliff in that time.

Now, all that said - you claim being a DBA is working out for you, and if that's the case, more power to you. Hey, if a good DBA assignment comes up NOW, I will take it - but it's gonna be my very last, and not for more than 3 months, likelier 2. All I can say is - if I were to stay in IT long term, I'd move to Phoenix, take you out for "Beer, wings and pool" on those Friday nights when I'm not on the prowl, and plod happily on for another couple of decades.

And as long as you're HAPPPY doing what you're doing, that's all that counts.